Sophia Burbee never lets a store-bought dress get the better of her fashionable eye. If the dress doesn’t work, she tailors it.
“I have one outfit that I altered the straps on it and I added a little belt,” said Sophia, who is 11 years old and attends Cedar Hill Middle School.
She and her fellow pre-teen fashionista, Amelie MacDonald, also 11 and also a student at Cedar Hill Middle School, will be plying their scissors, needles, threads and most of all their discerning eyes at the Royal B.C. Museum’s Fashion Machine this weekend.
About 40 young people, nine to 13, have been selected with the help of Theatre Skam and The Makehouse to stitch, sew and curate during the event, which explores the art of fashion design.
The show kicks off with members of the audience selecting one of two buttons, which say either “I’m In” or sport a chicken motif.
Those daring enough to opt in and lucky enough to be picked will become fashion models for the young designers. First, the audience members’ outfits will be critiqued and the young people will trade ideas on how to give them zap and zing.
Then those audience members will be asked to step out of their clothes and into robes while the designers go to work.
They might add a pocket to a shirt, adjust its collar, add elbow patches to a jacket — anything they dream up to give the outfit some interest.
“It’s fun,” said Amelie, a second-year veteran of Fashion Machine. “You get to take a complete stranger’s clothes and tear them apart.”
Fellow vet Sophia adds: “Sometimes we even change their hair.”
At the end of the evening, those whose clothes were refashioned will show off their new looks on the catwalk.
Chris O’Connor, Royal B.C. Museum learning-department producer for the family and school program, said Fashion Machine is really a chance for young people like Sophia and Amelie to develop a critical eye for fashion.
Fashion trends don’t just happen by accident, O’Connor said. Designers are constantly at work, testing their ideas in studios and at catwalk shows. Somehow, every year, an artistic consensus develops about what is a good look for the season, and garment makers go to work.
He said Fashion Machine is meant to give the young designers a chance to start thinking about the whole process.
“What causes an artistic kind of consensus for the public to decide what is fashionable?” O’Connor said. “What does it mean to go against what is fashionable?”
“These can be big questions for these young designers.”
Also, the museum’s own collection of historical outfits will give the designers a chance to look at past fashions and think about the social forces at work in their creation and their changes over time.
“That’s the real crux of this evening,” said O’Connor.
“The museum is really set up for observation and learning about trends and shifts in how objects, like clothes, were designed,” he said.
Amelie’s mother, Liz Crocker, said she was glad last year when the event organizers taught the kids to think about all body types.
“It was really about creating clothes to look good on anybody,” Crocker said.
But the biggest impression was watching how her daughter reacted with a poise the mom had never before witnessed.
“I always knew she was creative.” said Crocker. “But to see her up on stage and grabbing the microphone from the MC and explaining what she had done, was really something.”
“It was really neat to watch her show off a confidence I didn’t even know she had,” she said.
The Fashion Machine runs Saturday and Sunday, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Royal B.C. Museum.
Tickets are $10 per person or $30 per family (two adults and up to three youths). Details at royalbcmuseum.bc.ca.